Pattern-recognition, intersubjectivity, and dialogic meaning-making in education

Article Sidebar

PDF
Published: Jan 7, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/dpj.2020.314
Keywords:
education meaning-making pattern recognition intersubjectivity

Main Article Content

Eugene Matusov
School of Education University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States

Abstract

From a conventional monological view, meaning-making is located in a particular statement. In conventional schools, students are positioned to be enactors of ready-made knowledge and skills on teacher’s demand based on their pattern-recognition and production, rather than to be authors of their own education, learning, knowledge, and meaning. Pattern recognition involves the emergence of active production of diverse potential patterns that may or may not approximate well the targeted pattern (“sprouting”). The sprouting can be guided (“supervised”) by an expert or unguided, mediated or unmediated. These diverse potential patterns are sequentially evaluated about how likely each of them can be close to the targeted pattern. In each evaluation, the probabilistic confidence of some patterns grows while some other patterns decrease. In contrast, according to Bakhtin, meaning-making is defined as the relationship between a genuine, interested, information-seeking, question and serious response to it. From the Bakhtinian dialogic perspective, a statement does not have any meaning until it is viewed as a reply to some question in an internally persuasive discourse. A student’s meaning-making process starts with a genuine, interested, information-seeking, question raised by the student. At least, when a student cannot yet formulate this genuine question, they have to be pregnant with such a question, experiencing a certain puzzlement, uneasiness, curiosity, tension, and so on. Another aspect of dialogic meaning-making is interaddressivity. A student is interested in other people: 1) in what other people may think and how they feel about it; however these people define this it, and 2) in other people as such – in what they are doing, feeling, relating, and thinking about; in the relationship with these people; in the potential that these people may realize and offer; and so on.

Article Details

How to Cite
Matusov, E. (2020). Pattern-recognition, intersubjectivity, and dialogic meaning-making in education. Dialogic Pedagogy: A Journal for Studies of Dialogic Education, 8. https://doi.org/10.5195/dpj.2020.314
Issue
Vol. 8 (2020)
Section
Editorials

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.

Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link. 

Author Biography

Eugene Matusov, School of Education University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States

Eugene Matusov is a Professor of Education at the University of Delaware. He studied developmental psychology with Soviet researchers working in the Vygotskian paradigm and worked as a schoolteacher before immigrating to the United States. He uses sociocultural and Bakhtinian dialogic approaches to education. His recent books are Matusov, E. (2017). Nikolai N. Konstantinov’s authorial math pedagogy for people with wings, Matusov, E. & Brobst, J. (2013). Radical experiment in dialogic pedagogy in higher education and its Centauric failure: Chronotopic analysis, and Matusov, E. (2009). Journey into dialogic pedagogy

References

Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Aristotle. (2000). Nicomachean ethics (R. Crisp, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1991). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1993). Toward a philosophy of the act (V. Liapunov, Trans. 1st ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1999). Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Berlyand, I. E. (2009). A few words about Bibler's dialogics: The School of the Dialogue of Cultures conception and curriculum. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 47(1), 20–33. doi:10.2753/RPO1061-0405470101

Bibler, V. S. (2009). The foundations of the School of the Dialogue of Cultures program. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 47(1), 34–60. doi:10.2753/RPO1061-0405470102

Bishop, C. M. (2006). Pattern recognition and machine learning. New York: Springer.

Bruner, J., Wood, D., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17, 89-100.

Carr, W. (2006). Philosophy, methodology and action research. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 40(4), 421-435. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9752.2006.00517.x

Dearden, R. (1984). Education and training. Westminster Studies in Education, 7(1), 57-66.

Dewey, J. (1956). The child and the curriculum and the school and society (Combined ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Drier, H. S. (2000). Investigating mathematics as a community of learners. Teaching Children Mathematics, 6(6), 358-363.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1961). The souls of black folks. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

Dumazedier, J. (1974). Sociology of leisure. New York: Elsevier Scientific Publ. Co.

Fogel, A. (1993). Developing through relationships: Origins of communication, self, and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Forman, E. A., Minick, N., & Stone, C. A. (Eds.). (1993). Contexts for learning: Sociocultural dynamics in children's development. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (2nd ed.). London: Taylor & Francis.

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow (First U.S. edition. ed.). New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Hirsch, E. D. (1996). The schools we need and why we don't have them (1st ed.). New York: Doubleday.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Koffka, K. (1935). Principles of gestalt psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.

Köhler, W. (1929). Gestalt psychology. New York,: H. Liveright.

Kovbasyuk, O., & Blessinger, P. (2013). Meaning-centered education: International perspectives and explorations in higher education. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Labaree, D. F. (1997). How to succeed in school without really learning: The credentials race in American education. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Labaree, D. F. (2010). Someone has to fail: The zero-sum game of public schooling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics, and culture in everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lave, J. (1992). Word problems: A microcosm of theories of learning. In P. Light & G. Butterworth (Eds.), Context and cognition: Ways of learning and knowing. (pp. 74-92). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub. Corp.

Lobok, A. M. (2001). The probabilistic world: The chronicles of the philosophical-pedagogical reflections of an educational experiment. Yekaterinburg, Russia: Association of Small Businesses.

Lobok, A. M. (2012). My educational odyssey to dialogic agency-based probabilistic pedagogy. Journal of Russian and Eastern European Psychology, 50(6), 5-8.

Lobok, A. M. (2014). Education/obrazovanie as an experience of an encounter. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 2, S1-S5. http://dpj.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/dpj1/article/view/84 doi:10.5195/dpj.2014.84

Luria, A. R. (1976). Cognitive development, its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2016). “Spoilsport” in drama education vs. dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 4, A45-A80. http://dpj.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/dpj1/article/view/151/113 doi:10.5195/dpj.2016.151

Matusov, E. (1996). Intersubjectivity without agreement. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 3(1), 25-45. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327884mca0301_4

Matusov, E. (2009). Journey into dialogic pedagogy. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.

Matusov, E. (2011a). Authorial teaching and learning. In E. J. White & M. Peters (Eds.), Bakhtinian pedagogy: Opportunities and challenges for research, policy and practice in education across the globe (pp. 21-46). New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

Matusov, E. (2011b). Irreconcilable differences in Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s approaches to the social and the individual: An educational perspective. Culture & Psychology, 17(1), 99-119. doi:10.1177/1354067X10388840

Matusov, E. (2017). Severe limitations of the poietic individual mind. Review of the book . Review of the book [Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.] Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 5, R1-R8. doi:10.5195/dpj.2017.178

Matusov, E. (2020, in press). Envisioning education in a post-work leisure-based society: A dialogic perspective. New York: Palgrave.

Matusov, E., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2012). Diverse approaches to education: Alienated learning, closed and open participatory socialization, and critical dialogue. Human Development, 55(3), 159-166. doi:10.1159/000339594

Matusov, E., Smith, M. P., Soslau, E., Marjanovic-Shane, A., & von Duyke, K. (2016). Dialogic education from and for authorial agency. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 4, A162-A197. http://dpj.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/dpj1/article/view/172/130 doi:10.5195/dpj.2016.172

Matusov, E., & von Duyke, K. (2010). Bakhtin’s notion of the Internally Persuasive Discourse in education: Internal to what? (A case of discussion of issues of foul language in teacher education). In K. Junefelt & P. Nordin (Eds.), Proceedings from the Second International Interdisciplinary Conference on perspectives and limits of dialogism in Mikhail Bakhtin Stockholm University, Sweden June 3-5, 2009 (pp. 174-199). Stockholm: Stockholm University.

Matusov, E., von Duyke, K., & Kayumova, S. (2016). Mapping concepts of agency in educational contexts. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50(3), 420–446. doi:10.1007/s12124-015-9334-2

Mead, G. H. (1956). On social psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons: Social organization in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view (1st ed.). New York,: Harper & Row.

Murray, L., & Trevarthen, C. (1985). Emotional regulation of interactions between two-month-olds and their mothers. In T. Field & N. A. Fox (Eds.), Social perception in infants (pp. 177-197). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub. Corp.

Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane‐Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in higher education, 31(2), 199-218.

Nikulin, D. V. (1998). Mikhail Bakhtin: A theory of dialogue. Constellations, 5(3), 381-402.

Nikulin, D. V. (2006). On dialogue. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Nikulin, D. V. (2010). Dialectic and dialogue. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Plato, & Riddell, J. (1973). The Apology of Plato, with a revised text and English notes, and a digest of Platonic idioms. New York: Arno Press.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press.

Scribner, S. (1977). Modes of thinking and ways of speaking: Culture and logic reconsidered. In P. N. Johnson-Laird & P. C. Wason (Eds.), Thinking (pp. 483-500). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Scribner, S., & Cole, M. (1981). The psychology of literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Sidorkin, A. M. (1999). Beyond discourse: Education, the self, and dialogue. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Sinclair, J. M., & Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: The English used by teachers and pupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Sutton, R. S., & Barto, A. G. (1998). Reinforcement learning: An introduction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Todorov, T. (1984). Mikhail Bakhtin: The dialogical principle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Van Oers, B. (2012). Meaningful cultural learning by imitative participation: The case of abstract thinking in primary school. Human Development, 55(3), 136-158.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S., & Kozulin, A. (1986). Thought and language (Translation newly rev. and edited / ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L. S., & Luria, A. R. (1993). Studies on the history of behavior: Ape, primitive, and child. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.